My Secret Mother: Lorna Moon

by Richard de Mille

Richard de Mille was raised in the luxurious eccentricity of Hollywood, as the adopted son of Cecil B. de Mille and his wife, Constance. He continued to wonder about his birth parents, though, particularly given the odd hints that were dropped by people close to his family and his startling physical similarities to his grandfather. After sixty years of of pursuing his secret mother, de Mille now writes the true story of her life and of the perfect conspiracy that made him a full but far from ordinary member of the de Mille family. That lost mother turned out to be Lorna Moon, a newspaper-woman, screenwriter, and bestselling novelist, a woman who had been born in a village in the north-east of Scotland but who had changed her name and built her career to become an exotic figure in the Hollywood of the silent film era. She lived about a mile from the house in which de Mille grew up and had a love affair with his uncle, William, that produced the infant boy who was adopted by Cecil and Constance in 1922.

De Mille recalls growing up in the rarefied air of privileged Hollywood with humor and insight, and offers rare, very human inside portraits of the people among whom he was raised. Immaculately researched and sensitively told, this is a story that is both memoir and mystery, with a serious sense of history and a charming sense of humor.

Genres: Memoir

311 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1998

About the author

Richard de Mille was born in Monrovia, California, to William C. de Mille and the Scottish author and screenwriter Lorna Moon. His uncle, Cecil B. DeMille, adopted and raised Richard, not telling him of his true parentage until the death of his birth father when Richard was 33 years old.

In 1955, he completed his B.A. degree at Pepperdine University and married Margaret Belgrano. He went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1961. He remained with that institution as a research psychologist until 1962, when he became a lecturer in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1965, he left that position, becoming editorial director of the Brooks Foundation the following year. He stayed there until 1967, becoming a research psychologist at the General Research Corp. in 1968, where he remained until 1973.

De Mille wrote Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory (1976), a book describing the detective work which led him to claim that Carlos Castaneda was a hoaxer and plagiarist and that don Juan is fictional. He edited a second book on the same subject, The Don Juan Papers (1980), when he found that his exposé did not lead Casteneda's most ardent followers to fall away. This book contains documents representing views of Castaneda across the spectrum. He also wrote a biography of his birth mother, screenwriter Lorna Moon, entitled My Secret Mother: Lorna Moon.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating story by Richard DeMille. He was the adopted son of Cecil B. DeMille, and gossips assumed he was the product of one of Cecil's indiscretions. In fact, he was the son of William C. deMille, Cecil's brother, and only learned that "uncle bill" was his father later in life. A wonderful behind the scenes look at a famous Hollywood family, and the world of family secrets--which gives it a more universal appeal. Top notch.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whereas I found the sections about Lorna Moon's life interesting, I found the book as a whole rather a slog. The writing style was a bit odd, and although it put her story in context there seemed to be an awful lot about the de Mille family. There also seemed to be a disproportionate amount of space given to the life of his half-sister Mary. It left me with the feeling that he had padded the book out to make it a reasonable length.